October 24, 2004

Bush's Incompetence -> Terrorists Get Weapons of Destruction

The short version of the story:

There were 350 [metric] tons of high explosives [380 tons] in Iraq under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency. So they weren’t of much danger to anyone.

In possibly the worst screw-up of the invasion and post-invasion time period, the Bush Administration did not prevent those same explosives from being plundered by people wishing to do harm to Americans.

The result? We’re seeing those same explosives in the hands of terrorists and insurgents. They are being used to kill our servicemen and women in Iraq (in car bombs, improvised explosive devices, etc.).

Further, the Bush administration has known this for over a year and, while they were in control of Iraq, did not notify the IAEA. Then they pressured the Iraqis not to tell the IAEA.

There are a number of reasons why you can imagine the White House and the civilians at the Pentagon wouldn’t want to inform the IAEA. But one pretty clear one is that letting the IAEA find out would pretty clearly mean that the American public would find out what a major league screw-up the president and his advisors had allowed to happen.

Only a couple weeks ago did the Iraqis finally report the theft to the IAEA. And from there it was only a matter of time till the yearlong cover-up started to unravel.

Did you see the front page of today's New York Times? This is the story:

"An American soldier and three Iraqi civilians were killed today, the military said, a day after Iraqi officials announced that the deadliest ambush of the insurgency left about 50 freshly trained and unarmed Iraqi soldiers dead in remote eastern Iraq on Saturday evening."

The picture that accompanied this story (see link) carried this caption: "The bodies of newly trained Iraqi soldiers on a remote road outside the town of Mandali Sunday. The gunmen who killed them, in the deadliest ambush of the insurgency, were reportedly disguised as policemen."

I think lots of people saw that picture, and lost will begin to connect the dots: Freedom is NOT on the march, and things are NOT going well, contrary to popular Spinners.

This may not change the mind of the "base," but it might change the mind of the swinger.

We can only hope. And yet, the conservative news outlets will spin this yet. And if they can't, they will bring up something irrelevant about Kerry and harp on it until IT becomes the story. Perhaps I am too jaded, but I have yet to see anything stick to the Boy Emperor.